Out of Focus Pt. 04

"Why, thank you, Mr. Chandler," my hostess said with what appeared to be a genuine smile. I felt a bit sad as I thought about the difficulties she unknowingly faced at this point. For I had made up my mind not to wait even a bit in 'this' existence to be the instrument of her husband's undoing with what I knew of his business practices ... and his 'other' practices.

And, while his moral depravity was reprehensible, it would serve just as well to have him face the prospect of prison for illegalities in business as it would to put his wife and family's reputation through the sewer of an incest accusation and its repercussions. I would have to ask Alicia to keep what we knew to ourselves for now. Francine might be aware that we knew, and her mother would surely need to know everything eventually, but it was no one else's business; at least until we could get the girl some professional help.

I was waiting just below the front porch when Alicia appeared from the side of the house. She had changed from her party dress into pants and a sweater top suitable for a mild winter's day in Georgia. She had evidently wanted to avoid any contact with either of her parents in her haste to depart. I smile broadly and held my hand out to take her bag; but she would not relinquish it until she had given me one of her trademark hot kisses.

****

Bottom line?

J. Carter Thompson was sentenced to only three years in prison once the DA received the anonymous package containing a DVD-R with many incriminating records about his business dealings and launched a raid on the company with a team of auditors. But Thompson's short time in prison turned into a life sentence when he died as collateral damage during the authorities' armed response to a prison riot--he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and caught a bullet in the throat.

Mrs. Thompson was scandalized by her husband's prosecution for business misdealings and saddened a tiny bit by his death. But she was not nearly as distraught about his death as she was furious about his actions when he had been alive when Alicia informed her mother quietly about her late departed father's inappropriate advances on her sister, Francine.

Mrs. Thompson and all the rest of us were very supportive of Francine, realizing that her caustic attitude had actually been generated, for the most part, by her actual deep resentment of her father's inappropriate sexual advances toward her. Francine quit work to enter into counseling with a psychiatric team specializing in helping victims of forced incest.

By the time that Francine was finished with her therapy and was living back at home with her mother, Steadman Carstairs had become legally divorced from his wife and had moved back to Decatur. Francine and Steadman, it turned out, had really had a thing for each other for years and, when Francine and he were finally married to each other, the child she was carrying this time really WAS his.

While the Feds had worked out the details of transitioning what was left of Thompson's company, I had quietly started my own consulting firm in order to provide for me and Alicia in our anticipated new life together. I had also opened another brokerage account dealing in high-risk--but high-yield--options in conjunction with the commodities market. Needless to say, with what I knew was ahead, I did quite well financially.

Mrs. Thompson and Alicia were saved from financial disaster by protected trusts. Thus, Mrs. Thompson could continue to live in her own house, and Alicia could continue to plan to attend college--at Agnes Scott, of course. It pained me to have to wait a couple of years to marry my true love; but, for the sake of her being able to focus on her studies, we did wait until her last year to marry.

I told Alicia the whole story of my various experiences within the alternate 'lives' that the Nasiib stone had allowed me to live. What proved to be the most beneficial tidbit of information for Alicia, as well as for her mother and Francine indirectly, was the alert to their genetic predisposition to certain cancers--a genetic condition passed through the mothers' sides of families in that situation.

Armed with that information, following Alicia's medical findings concerning her genetic risks, Mrs. Thompson scheduled an immediate exam and her primary care physician confirmed an odd situation with her ovaries and referred her to a gynecological oncologist, who removed a small growth that had the potential to turn cancerous, but was not yet at the dangerous or threatening stage.

Francine eventually decided to have a hysterectomy a couple of years later, after she and Steadman had already given birth to three children, two girls and a boy. I could not help but ponder the similarities and differences between her two daughters sired by Steadman and Chelsea and Grace, whom she had had with me--well, with her father--in a previous existence.

As for me, I had learned two valuable lessons during all of this strangeness. The first lesson was that I needed to stand for the important things in life--like love of family, the desire to do right by people personally and in business, and maintenance of my self-respect with dignity while helping others to do the same. And then there was the other lesson.

****

"Glenn, you watch out for Stuart, you heah?" hollered Alicia as our third and fourth raced around the monument area next to the entryway to the actually burial plots of the cemetery at Fort Snelling. Yeah, I was back in Minneapolis. We had come to Minnesota for the wedding of one of my cousins and I had convinced Alicia that I needed to pay respects to my grandfather's burial place before we hit the road back to the sunny South.

Thomas and Paul, our older two, stood around looking bored and basically ignored the younger two.

Yep! We had four boys. With what we knew about Alicia's potential for cancer, she and I had agreed that we needed to get busy in the baby-making activities as soon after we got married as possible. Thus, just a few months after Alicia's graduation from Scott and ten months after our wedding while she was still a senior, Thomas came on the scene. Fifteen months later, Paul joined us. It took another two years before we had Glenn and another two-and-a-half before we realized that daughters were probably a lost cause for us, as Stuart popped out.

Alicia finally waved the white flag on continuing to try for a daughter and had a radical hysterectomy done to preclude any of the cancer-related issues about which we were now suitably warned and prepared. We only had mild regrets at not having a daughter, but the boys kept our lives filled with enough joy and adventure to keep us entertained--and busy.

I know what you are thinking. What did we do about those two mysterious stones? Well, Alicia's Bahati stone pendant is stored at the bottom of our safe deposit box at the bank, right along with my Nasiib stone bracelet. We had decided that we were now in our mutual 'peaceful place' and would work together as a couple to maintain that peace.

Not that we did not argue at times--we certainly did. But we did so in such a manner that we did not burn any bridges. And we showed our boys how a married couple can argue constructively, without being truly mean to one another.

Of course, we did NOT show the boys how a married couple celebrates making up afterward. The way Alicia and I did that was just WAY too erotic!

As we were finishing up our visit to the cemetery, and were headed back to our Suburban, parked in one of the nearby parking spaces, I spotted one of the cemetery workers. Something about him triggered a memory.

He was Black--not simply African-American--the guy was really African 'Black.' As we passed him--he was riding a gas-powered gator utility vehicle--I noted that he might have been Somali, but he was not Mookie. I grinned to myself and, when Alicia looped her arm in mine and asked me what was so amusing, I just snorted a short laugh.

"Nothing really, Sweetheart; I was just distracted for a moment by a memory."

Alicia looked at me with her sweet smile and said, "Well, you just remember what our motto is when we begin to get distracted by the unimportant things in life." I laughed softly at her friendly admonition, since we had said this line to each other many times in our first decade together.

That was the second lesson I referred to earlier.

"Yeah, I know--Focus! Always keep your eyes open and really focus on what is important in life!"

THE END